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The Easter Island Statue Project (EISP) is a private research program and archive created by Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Principle Investigator and EISP founder and director, with Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, Rapa Nui artist and co-director of EISP. The profound and immediate need for conservation actions on the moai became apparent over the course of more than 20 years of subjective observation and field experience acquired by us during our island-wide archaeological survey, which was conducted in association with our Chilean and Rapa Nui colleagues.

Pumapunku, also called “Puma Pumku” or “Puma Puncu”, is part of a large temple complex or monument group that is part of the TiwanakuSite near Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In Aymara, its name means, “The Door of the Cougar”. The processes and technologies involved in the creation of these temples are still not fully understood by modern scholars. Our current ideas of the Tiwanaku culture hold that they had no writing system and also that the invention of the wheel was most likely unknown to them. The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery.

Puma Punku, truly startles the imagination. It seems to be the remains of a great wharf (for Lake Titicaca long ago lapped upon the shores of Tiahuanaco) and a massive, four-part, now collapsed building. One of the construction blocks from which the pier was fashioned weighs an estimated 440 tons (equal to nearly 600 full-size cars) and several other blocks laying about are between 100 and 150 tons.

The quarry for these giant blocks was on the western shore of Titicaca, some ten miles away. There is no known technology in all the ancient world that could have transported stones of such massive weight and size. The Andean people of 500 AD, with their simple reed boats, could certainly not have moved them. Even today, with all the modern advances in engineering and mathematics, we could not fashion such a structure.

Just out of the aerial picture (below) to the bottom left is the site of the Puma Punku. This is another ‘temple area’ with many finely cut stones some weighing over 100 tonnes. Its position to the south of the Akapana may have been important because it gave a good view to a sacred mountain far to the east.

Of course there is no certainty that this was the reason as the ancient builders left no written records.
All the legends have been handed down through the generations.

How were these monstrous stones moved and what was their purpose?
Posnansky suggested an answer, based upon his studies of the astronomical alignments of Tiahuanaco, but that answer is considered so controversial, even impossible, that it has been ignored and censured by the scientific community for fifty years.

Carved stone block at Puma Punku. This precision-made 6 mm wide
groove contains equidistant, drilled holes. It seems impossible that this
cuts were made with use of stone or copper tools.

The so-called Gate of the Sun seen at the back side.
Made of one piece of hard rock. Possibly it was a part of a large wall.
By the courtesy of www.inkatour.com, nr. 3696

Puma Punku doesn’t look impressive: a hill as remains of an old pyramid and a large number of megalithic block of stone on the ground, evidently smashed by a devastating earthquake. However, closer inspection shows that these stone blocks have been fabricated with a very advanced technology. Even more surprising is the technical design of these blocks shown in the drawing below. All blocks fit together like interlocking building blocks.

A wall of the Akapana, the pyramid of Tiahuanacu, shows similar modular design.
Blocks that are piled one on top of the other but the underside of the upper stone is cut at an angle. The top of the standing stone is cut at the same angle, as shown on the figure below.

This stone technology plainly contradicts what official archaeology suggests about the general state of development of the ancient peoples of South-America.

Source:
“Die Ruinenstätte von Tiahuanaco im Hochlande des alten Peru”
(The Ruins of Tiahuanaco in the Highlands of Ancient Peru)
1892 book about Tiahanaco written by two German
discoverers and engineers Alphons Stübel and Max Uhle

The architectural achievements seen at Pumapunku are striking in light of the presumed level of technological capability available during its construction. Due to the monumental proportions of the stones, the method by which they were transported to Pumapunku has been a topic of interest since the temple’s discovery. The largest of these stone blocks is 7.81 meters long, 5.17 meters wide, averages 1.07 meters thick, and is estimated to weigh about 131 metric tons. The second largest stone block found within the Pumapunka is 7.90 meters long, 2.50 meters wide, and averages 1.86 meters thick. Its weight has been estimated to be 85.21 metric tons. Both of these stone blocks are part of the Plataforma Lítica and composed of red sandstone. Based upon detailed petrographic and chemical analyses of samples from both individual stones and known quarry sites, archaeologists concluded that these and other red sandstone blocks were transported up a steep incline from a quarry near Lake Titicaca roughly 10 km away. Smaller andesite blocks that were used for stone facing and carvings came from quarries within the Copacabana Peninsula about 90 km away from and across Lake Titicaca from the Pumapunka and the rest of the Tiwanaku Site.

Did Nostradamus Really Predict the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks?

Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor

Date: 11 September 2011 Time: 03:47 PM ET

September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City.
CREDIT: Public domain image

It’s a story that began nearly a decade ago, circulated widely for months, and is still believed by many around the world: That the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centers had been foretold by the famous sixteenth-century French writer Nostradamus. He wrote in ambiguous, nearly inscrutable sets of phrases called quatrains that believers claim predicted everything from the American Civil War to Hitler to John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Those who believe in prophecy sift through reams of Nostradamus’s vague writings trying to breathe new meaning into stale words. Here are a few of the Nostradamus prophecies that seemed to be eerily prophetic:

“Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis / The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude / Fire approaches the great new city / Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up / Within months, rivers will flow with blood / The undead will roam the earth for little time.”

It’s easy to fit these words to the actual events of 9/11, and much was made of the second line, as New York City (the “Metropolis”), lies at about 40 degrees north latitude. To someone reading Nostradamus for the first time, one could be convinced that he might have predicted the tragedy.

If you’re familiar with the writings of Nostradamus, though, this particular prediction does not ring true: This writing is actually a hybrid of real Nostradamus verse and fiction, and whoever rewrote it was spectacularly sloppy. Not only is it not written in quatrain form (Nostradamus’ typical writing style), but the phrase “two steel birds” is a obvious give away, as steel wasn’t invented until 1854, nearly 200 years after Nostradamus died.

Another suspect quatrain that surfaced after 9/11 reads: “In the city of God there will be a great thunder? / Two brothers torn apart by Chaos while the fortress endures? / The great leader will succumb / The third big war will begin when the big city is burning?- Nostradamus 1654.”

Given the fact that Nostradmaus died in 1566, 88 years before the quatrain was supposedly written, it seems a remarkable piece indeed. This was actually published on a Canadian website as part of an essay on how easily an important-sounding prophecy can be created using vague imagery. What began as an essentially skeptical piece explaining how prophecy can fool people eventually circulated as the real thing.

Visible Only From Above, Mystifying ‘Nazca Lines’ Discovered in Mideast

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 14 September 2011 Time: 10:33 AM ET

The giant stone structures form wheel shapes with spokes often radiating inside. Here a cluster of wheels in the Azraq Oasis.
CREDIT: David D. Boyer APAAME_20080925_DDB-0237

They stretch from Syria to Saudi Arabia, can be seen from the air but not the ground, and are virtually unknown to the public.

They are the Middle East’s own version of the Nazca Lines — ancient “geolyphs,” or drawings, that span deserts in southern Peru — and now, thanks to new satellite-mapping technologies, and an aerial photography program in Jordan, researchers are discovering more of them than ever before. They number well into the thousands.

Referred to by archaeologists as “wheels,” these stone structures have a wide variety of designs, with a common one being a circle with spokes radiating inside. Researchers believe that they date back to antiquity, at least 2,000 years ago. They are often found on lava fields and range from 82 feet to 230 feet (25 meters to 70 meters) across.

“In Jordan alone we’ve got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than (the) Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older,” said David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia.

Kennedy’s new research, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals that these wheels form part of a variety of stone landscapes. These include kites (stone structures used for funnelling and killing animals); pendants (lines of stone cairns that run from burials); and walls, mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for up to several hundred feet and have no apparent practical use.

His team’s studies are part of a long-term aerial reconnaissance project that is looking at archaeological sites across Jordan. As of now, Kennedy and his colleagues are puzzled as to what the structures may have been used for or what meaning they held.

Updated 6/24/2011 – The Newport Tower has been the subject of discussion and controversy since the Colonists first arrived in the new world and discovered the structure on Rhode Island, USA. Early explorers noted that the tower existed during their early explorations of North America. However, that did not deter skeptics from claiming that the tower was constructed in Colonial times. Documented research shows that the tower was most likely constructed in the 15th Century, destroyed in the 16th Century and then rebuilt in the 17th Century on the 200th anniversary of its original construction. The Newport Tower is an important North American Landmark; however, it is the Newport Island itself that has been an important focal point of civilizations around the world for thousands of years.

Geoglyphology

The information gathered for presentation on this website was gathered using the new science of Geoglyphology. (Google keyword: Geoglyphology). The calculations performed on both this website and the Kensington Runestone website require the use of a special software called “Google Earth”. Google’s software is able to calculate true spherical bearings on a curved surface and then display them correctly on a flat plane. This software can be acquired free by searching the internet using the keywords “Google Earth”.

Spherical Geometry

In spherical geometry all lines are curved along the surface and no lines are parallel. It is difficult to grasp the concept that two parallel headings can cross. That is because we are used to thinking in terms of Plane Geometry on a flat plane. However, this changes when you draw lines on a sphere. In dealing with a sphere you enter the realm of Spherical Geometry.

Spherical Geometry is the study of figures on the surface of a sphere, as opposed to the type of geometry studied in plane geometry or solid geometry. In spherical geometry, straight lines are great circles, so any two lines will meet in two places. There are also no parallel lines. The angle between two lines in spherical geometry is the angle between the planes of the corresponding great circles, and a spherical triangle is defined by its three angles. There is no concept of similar triangles in plane geometry.

In the field of Geoglyphology, we are plotting lines in a spherical world and then displaying the results on a flat plane. It is difficult to grasp the concept of combining Spherical Geometry with Plane Geometry. That is why the field of Geoglyphology could not have been proposed without the advent of software that computes using Spherical Geometry and then displays it on a flat plane. This type of precise mapping precludes the plotting of these bearings on a flat map. Maps become distorted when converted from a sphere to a flat map. Any lines that are depicted on a flat non-satellite map, on this website, were first plotted using the Google software and then drawn on the flat map after the end points were determined. Even then, the proper curvature is missing.

The Newport Tower The Newport Tower has been carbon dated as being over 500 years old. The simple geometry associated with the Tower is outlined below. The results of the carbon dating and details of the Newport Tower, the Kensington Runestone, and many more landmarks, geoglyphs and monoliths can be found in the newly released book “Ancient Signposts”. The book can be found on Amazon.com. As you will see below, the Newport Tower and Inspiration Peak Locations have been known and revered for thousands of years. Based on the dating of the of the geoglyphs pointing to Inspiration Peak, a North American survey marker, it appears that revealing the location did not begin in earnest until the Norse came to the Americas circa 1000AD. The only geoglyph that has been found to date, that points to Inspiration Peak prior to 500BC is the Stonehenge Monolith in the UK. The Stonehenge geoglyph has been dated to c3100BC.

Purpose

Newport Tower was built by early inhabitants of North America for two reasons. The first was to point the way to Inspiration Peak, a place of special geographical importance. The second was to substantiate the builders land claim to North America by using the unique geographical location of Newport (RI USA). The predecessors of the people that built the tower knew of Newport, RI USA for over 7000 years. This is substantiated by the Egyptian Gulfo de Centra geoglyph in West Africa that points out the Newport Tower site. There was a reason that North America held some special significance. Geoglyphs found around the world show that people were mapping out what would later be known as the United States at least as far back as the building of the Mayan Pyramids. Mayan Pyramids located in Central America outline the boundaries of what would eventually become the United States. This is outlined in the book “Ancient Signposts” which can be found on Amazon.com.

Avid moon watcher that I am, I must confess that I never could recognize the face of the man in the moon. How could anyone conceivably mistake that face — that round, profoundly gentle face, jolly and eternally indulgent, that unconditionally comforting countenance — for male?

The dark marks that define her features are in reality the bodies of water on her surface: the sea of tranquility, the ocean of storms and the sea of fertility. Sounds like a woman to me! My version of the ma’am in the moon will always be Aunt Jemima. The ultimate maternal perfection fantasy figure: purveyor of affection, protection and pancakes.

Women are inextricably connected to the moon, to her rhythms and waves. A woman’s blood waxes and wanes with the moon. Her urges and juices ebb and flow. And the moon, as she grows from crescent to full every month, mimics the pregnant swell of a woman’s belly, or a bunny’s, or a dog’s.

The moon as mother is a prevalent, primal mythological theme. The West African Nigeriens believe that the great moon mother sends the moon bird to Earth to deliver babies. The Baganda of Central Africa bathe their newborns by the light of the first full moon following birth. In Ashanti tradition, the moon Akua’ba, is a fertility figure. Women carry effigies of her tucked into their skirts at the small of their backs as an aid to conception and a guarantee of sturdy children.

Women in Europe did the same. During the Renaissance, long after the mass acceptance of Christianity, it was understood that if a woman wanted anything, she should pray not to God, but to the moon mother for succor. Saint Augustine denounced women for dancing “impudently and filthily all the day long upon the days of the new moon,” even as their Hebrew sisters were scorned for wearing lunar amulets by the biblical prophets in Isaiah 3:18.

Alchemy and the Philosophers’ Stone are real. This is not a joke or a scam. This book covers the full theory and practice of alchemy and how to make the Philosophers’ Stone, capable of reversing the aging process and curing all disease to the effect that one could live forever. This is an ancient secret which has never before been publicly released. Please read the book before making any judgement on it; this world is not what it seems to be. The Book of Aquarius is free and public-domain (no copyright). You may copy and distribute the book in any way.

The Pawnee Americans is an obscure 1925 article recently brought to our attention by a reader. Author Mark E. Zimmerman cites archaeological finds along major riverways throughout mid-America as well as Native American ethnographies to theorize Celts, who came to America long before Columbus, had children with the ancestors of a Pawnee tribe, the same one mentioned by Von Del Chamberlain in his 1982 book When Stars Came Down to Earth: Cosmology of the Skidi Pawnee Indians of North America illustrated with a map of the Milky Way preserved on a tanned elk hide. (NY Times article on Adler Planetarium show “Spirits From the Sky” in late 2000). Although Zimmerman believes these “long heads” slowly migrated from the eastern seaboard, through the Ohio River valley to what is today southeastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas, perhaps more conveniently, Celtic sailors well may have navigated the inland waterways to bring their Ogham and European archaeoastronomy to southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle. Zimmerman’s 13 page article, highlighted and including our map, below, has just been added to our online PDF bibliography. You may download the 1.2 MB article directly here. Alternatively, for an overview of this and more, watch Celts & Indians on our videos page.

Zimmerman refers to a tribal elder Lenni Lenape historian and the Walum Olum, tree bark pictographs to aid in recalling song verses. More about the largely ignored, Native American ethnographic record on this, can be found at Frozen Trail, a web site describing Norse travels across an ice bridge from Greenland to Labrador. At the bottom of this external web page are links for more about the controversy regarding this artifact, discredited and discarded by much of academia, still simmering in 2008.

Remains of Ancient Palace Discovered

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 05 August 2011 Time: 02:04 PM ET

Only a small portion of the structure, possibly an ancient palace, has been excavated so far (part of it can be seen in the photo’s bottom foreground) in central Sudan beneath another ancient palace. The structure is the oldest building ever found in the ancient city of Meroë.
CREDIT: Photo copyright Royal Ontario Museum

Hidden beneath an ancient palace in what is now central Sudan, archaeologists have discovered the oldest building in the city of Meroë, a structure that also may have housed royalty.

At its height, the city was controlled by a dynasty of kings who ruled about 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) of territory that stretched from southern Egypt to areas south of modern-day Khartoum.

People of Meroë built palaces and small pyramids, and developed a writing system that scholars still can’t fully translate today. Although Meroë has been excavated off and on for more than 150 years, archaeologists are not yet clear on how it came to be. The city seems to have emerged out of nowhere

The researchers involved hope that data from two US space agency (Nasa) lunar missions will substantiate or challenge their theory within the next year.

For decades, scientists have been trying to understand why the near side of the Moon – the one visible from Earth – is flat and cratered while the rarely-seen far side is heavily cratered and has mountain ranges higher than 3,000m.

Various theories have been proposed to explain what’s termed the lunar dichotomy. One suggests that tidal heating, caused by the pull of the Earth on the ocean of liquid rock that once flowed under the lunar crust, may have been the cause.

But this latest paper proposes a different solution: a long-term series of cosmic collisions.